Repeat Offender
by Mira Westing
Summary: Mike Logan takes on the one case he might not be prepared to face. Introduces a new character. The R rating might be a little too much but I believe in being safe. First of many chapters.
1. Default Chapter

  
*Standard warnings apply. Yadda, yadda. You know the drill. Please read, I hope you enjoy and I'd love it if you reviewed. That's it*  
  
Detective Mike Logan Smiled briefly at the secretary as she made her way across the squad room. Secretary probably wasn't the most PC term for her position any longer but she laughed at him when he tried to call her anything else. Besides, there was no real definition for what Korrinne had become at the one-seven. She'd started out as a secretary -- data entry, phone answering -- but, somewhere along the way people had begun to use her assets in a more comprehensive way. If cops could have a 'research assistant', Korrinne was it.   
  
In a rare moment of tact and sensitivity, Lenny Brisco waited until Korrinne had entered the Captain's office and was well out of ear-shot before letting loose a low whistle. "Guess I don't have to ask if you two have patched things up."   
  
Logan almost flinched. "I don't know that we're going to."   
  
"Too bad, I like Kori." But Lenny made it a point never to get involved in his partner's love life. Especially when the woman in question was a co-worker. Mike's relationship's rarely ended on a happy note and Lenny had no interest in getting caught in the cross-fire. Although, Lenny had to admit (if only silently and to himself) that he'd hoped that Mike wouldn't screw this one up. The kid deserved a good run with a good lady. Korrinne Bradley was a good lady -- bright, pretty, articulate, and elegant...not at all Mike's usual type. However, if nothing else, her temperment would make the break-up easier than the standard Logan fiasco. Kori would go on like nothing had happened; she was a straight player that way and private enough to ensure descretion. "Have you taken another look at the Lola Denver case?"   
  
"Sure and the good news is that we found all the right dead ends the first time through." Pulling his thoughts from the ruins of an affair that he'd thought had potential, Mike flipped through a stack of paper in front of him. "I just don't get it, Lenny. This kid was missing for ten days before her parents even reported her gone. She had no history of running away, by all accounts she was the perfect student. Why didn't they call us?"   
  
"More importantly, why did they lie to her school about where she was?" Lenny held up the Denver girl's picture. Beautiful kid. Eighteen, big blue eyes, long red hair. Striking features. "But both of the parents have alibis and my gut says they're telling us the truth now."   
  
"I'm with you on the parents but no one else wanted to hurt this kid. She was sqeaky clean." It was only the beginning of the day and already Logan's head hurt. This case he hated more than most. However, it couldn't hurt to pose the routine questions once more. "Money?"   
  
"The Denver's don't have much. Lola only had ten dollars on her when she left the house that day."   
  
"Sex?"   
  
"Family and friends insist there was no boyfriend. Very devout Catholic but she's a looker. Just because she wasn't having sex doesn't mean no one wanted her to."   
  
Good point but, unfortunately, probably not important. "She wasn't raped before she was killed. Someone keep her tied up in that warehouse for six days, changed her clothes, brought her food. If this was about passion there would have been rape."   
  
"We only have a 72 hour window before the murder. She could have been raped before that and the ME wouldn't necessarily be able to tell."   
  
Logan sighed. "We could interview all 300 boys in her school and the men in her neighborhood but, I tell ya', Lenny, I don't think it would do any good."   
  
"Let's call Kori in on this one. We've gone over it too many times, a new perspective might help."   
  
"No."   
  
It was Lenny's turn to sigh. "I know it's rocky between the two of you but she's got great instincts and we're stuck."   
  
"Not this one, Lenny." His look was intense.   
  
Lenny ignored it. "Mike, you have to start working with her again eventually. Sooner is better than later." After that speech, Lenny made a mental note to spend a moment each day just being glad that none of his exes worked in the department.   
  
"It's not that." Logan spread the morgue shots across Brisco's desk and leaned in closer to his partner. His voice low, he continued. "Look at this kid and don't tell me you haven't though it too."   
  
"They could be sisters." The dead girls' resemblance to Kori was eerie. Before common sense caught up to them, both Logan and Brisco had been visably disturbed at the crime scene. It had taken Mike the longest to recover from the shock. It was the first time Lenny had ever known his partner to need to leave the room to pull himself together. It couldn't be easy to see a carbon copy of your ex-girlfriend tied, gaged, and beaten to death. "The hair is what really does it."   
  
"It's everything, Lenny. The hair, the face. You probably don't realize it because she dresses so conservatively around here, but even the body is the same. I thought Lola Denver WAS Kori at first."   
  
"I know. But I ran it through the system, they're not related."   
  
"I did, too, but that's not the point." Lowering his voice even further, Mike glanced around the squad room. "Listen, she already has terrible nightmares, I don't want to add to that."   
  
Incredulously, Lenny surveyed his partner's face. "Whoa -- you really care about her, don't you?"   
  
"Lay off. Let's just say I don't want to cause her any more pain than I already have."   
  
"Your intentions are good but you know the Captain'll assign her to this all the same."   
  
"I hope not."  
  
  
  



	2. chapter two

Repeat Offender - Chapter Two  
  
  
  
Korrinne Bradley twirled a lock of hair around her index finger. She'd pick up the habit as a child and now it was as unconscious an action as breathing. Anyone who knew her well could read the heavily concealed distress in her eyes but, other than Mike Logan, no one in the squad room knew her that well. Good thing. Privacy was very important to her, it always had been. She'd already broken several of her own rules by dating a co-worker and sustaining a long term relationship. In the end, it had probably been a bad idea. Like the saying went: sleep with a cop, sleep with his partner. Lenny Brisco definately knew more about her private life than she would have liked, even if he did play dumb well. Soon they'd all know things she didn't even like to think about herself. The entire squad. She had to tell Brisco and Logan, the Captain would have to be let in as well. Before too long, they'd all know.   
  
"'Rin, are you okay?" Korrinne knew that Mike's nickname for her was simply and abbriviation of her given name she couldn't help thinking of the bird - a delicate little wren - when he said it. She certainly felt like a fragile common bird at the moment. Weather worn and in desperate need of shelter. Not so long before, Mike Logan had been that shelter.   
  
"I'm fine." He wasn't her's to lean on anymore. The only parts of him left in her life were a toothbrush and a razor in her bathroom. Painful reminders she used to pick at her emotional wounds - nothing to cling to.   
  
"I didn't want you in on this one." Mike appriciated the small smile that turned up the corners of her lips. It let him know that at least part of his Korrinne was still his - as long as she could still smile at him, there was something right with the world. "You don't know her, do you?"   
  
"No, although I see why you ask." Brisco was talking Captain Cruse in her office, so, for the moment, Korrinne and Mike were alone. On the other side of the squad room Ray Curtis glanced at them. Although Korrinne hadn't yet come to NY when Mike was reinstated, she'd heard that there was a healthy amount of rilvelry between Curtis and Logan. They hid it well but it was still there. Even after a year back on the force, most of the detectives were a bit wary of Mike, Ray's initial resistance hadn't helped matters. But Ray Curtis was the least of Korrinne's worries. "I know who killed her, Mike."   
  
"What?!" He straightened in his chair almost as if there was immediate physical danger.   
  
"I don't know his name but I know his past." The stories were like secrets, terrible secrets that she had to tell despite the pain. "Back in my hometown there was this rash of kidnappings in the local high school about six years ago." She came from a sleepy little Irish Catholic textile factory town about three hours outside the city. Population under a thousand. "All the girls were red-heads, between fifteen and eighteen, all turned up dead a few weeks after being reported missing." She watched the wheels turning in Mike's head. She was twenty-two, subtract six years..."Local cops weren't equiped to handle that type of thing - the guy left no evidence. He took the kids from their own homes but didn't make one mistake. Local police had never faced anything like it." Remembering was the hardest part. For years she'd spent every spare moment forgetting and, partially, it had worked. The details were sketchy in her mind. Every nuance of her being begged for it to be left that way. Forgetting wasn't healing but it came close enough. "My daddy was the police chief, you know. When the FBI came in, he took his deputies and stationed them at our house. He had five red-headed little girls."   
  
"I guess that's why this guy never tried to grab us from our house, we were never alone. We just should have listened to Daddy..." Kori shook her head, he eyes closed against the waterfall of memory. "I swear to God, Mike, the school was a three minute walk from our house. I'd forgotten my Physics homework and Maggie knew how I was struggling in that class...We were supposed to be safe, we were together. The guy had never attacked two at once...." There weren't many pictures of Maggie Bradley in Korrinne's scrapbook. The one Mike remembered was of a pretty laughing girl holding a puppy and pointing at the camera. Maggie had been all of thirteen months older than Korrinne. "He came out of nowhere. We were talking about Maggie's graduation - she wanted to go to Vassar. I don't remember him making a single sound, but suddenly he was pushing me into a car trunk. I don't know how he got both of us but Maggie was with me." Mike touched her hand and she allowed the gesture. She didn't know that Brisco and Cruse were behind her - it was better that way. "We were cop's kids, Mike. We knew the rules. He had to stop, he had to open the trunk. We had to run."   
  
"So I ran. He opened the trunk and I ran. If I just kept running, I'd live. That's all I thought - run, just run. I never even thought about looking back...for Maggie." She wouldn't speak the rest. there was no need, Mike had to realize. The long silences, nightmares, and he inability to let anyone close to her - everything that had driven them apart - it all had an origin. Korrinne had never distrusted Mike, only herself.   
  
"Anyway this is the exact same MO. The FBI never found that bastard and now he's back."   
  
Captain Cruse wasn't a warm woman; she was all business absolutely no personal. In the six months that she has worked there, she'd smiled twice. Thus, it was a surprise when she laid one hand on Korrinne's shoulder. "You don't know that for sure."   
  
"Five girls dead six years ago." Maggie, gone forever, "This sicko was methodical - the Denver girl's murder in an exact match."   
  
"And and isolated incident," Cruse interjected.   
  
"So far." Korrinne knew better than to contridict Cruse. The Captain was like a pit bull, she didn't back down when she was cornered no matter what the odds. The validity of Korrinne's knowledge aside, Cruse would balk if she felt her authority was being challenged. Knowing this, Korrinne conceded, "It's possibly that these cases have nothing to due with one another but we should consider the possibility, shouldn't we."   
  
"Of course." Cruse was tough but she had a soft spot for Bradley, even if it rarely showed. The young woman was bright and had a healthy helping of common sense, that Cruse could respect. "You could probably get the file without a load of political bullshit."   
  
"I'll call my father."   
  
*********************Part Three, coming soon*********************   
  
  
  



End file.
